The basic laws of quantum mechanics, the theory that describes the behaviour of microscopic particles – atoms, molecules, sub-atomic particles, etc. – have been discovered over one hundred years ago. And it is the most successful of our theories of Nature. It has explained (within our computational power) virtually all known phenomena, except gravity. However, despite all this, it is generally accepted that no one really understands quantum mechanics. The behaviour of microscopic particles is so different – in fundamental ways – from the way in which ordinary “big” objects that surround us in our daily life behave, that nothing has prepared us to intuitively understand them. Very often, surprising, even seemingly paradoxical, new quantum effects are discovered; being surprised is the clearest sign that we do not have a deep intuition on what is going on. The aim of this project is to make progress in deepening our understanding of the fundamental aspects of quantum mechanics.
The present project has at its core a simple observation. Quantum mechanics is fundamentally different from all that came before in almost every aspect. But, as far as I can see now, there is one property that stands above all when we try to understand what quantum mechanics is all about: quantum mechanics is our first theory of Nature that is non-deterministic at a fundamental level. Repeat an experiment in identical conditions and the result may turn out to be completely different. Importantly, this has nothing to do with imprecisions in performing the experiment: no matter how much we improve the experiment, we cannot reduce the uncertainty of its result.
Long considered an unpleasant aspect, non-determinism is anything but: Non-determinism enables new freedoms. Phenomena that could not occur in deterministic theories because they would violate some basic laws of nature become possible in non-deterministic theories, under the cover of randomness.
A famous example is nonlocality, with well-known applications such as quantum teleportation, quantum computation and quantum cryptography. In a deterministic world, if something acting in one place would instantaneously produce effects somewhere else, it would violate relativity; non-determinism allows it. Following intensive research on the subject, in recent years nonlocality (deriving from the so-called quantum entanglement) came to be viewed as one of the main aspects of nature. However, because its existence implies non-determinism but not vice-versa, non-determinism itself was seen as secondary.
But non-determinism allows many more freedoms, beyond nonlocality. The vision of this project is to change the paradigm and put non-determinism at the core. The aim is to go well beyond the insights gained from nonlocality and focus on other freedoms.
